by Nancy Thayer
After the warmth of the hospital, the frigid air hit her skin like a slap, but as Joanna detoured around taxis and cars in the hospital’s courtyard and turned down the narrow canyon of Fruit Street, she felt the sheer motion warming her blood. And then she came to North Grove Street and stood, suddenly overcome with a heady sense of the fullness of life. Holding Christopher against her, her briefcase and diaper bag pulling at her shoulders, she stood on the sidewalk and just looked and listened, breathing in the sensations of the city as if they were expensive perfumes. Beneath her feet the cement walk shuddered from the thunder of traffic along Storrow Drive, while overhead a subway car rumbled its way to the Charles Station T stop. Sirens wailed, horns honked, taxi drivers cursed and spat tobacco out the window, buses migrated past her, hissing and howling like steel-skinned dinosaurs. It was fabulous. She loved it, and felt tears sting her eyes, tears of homesickness for New York.
Christopher wriggled against her impatiently, and so she sniffed and turned down the street, heading for her hotel. She saw a homeless woman hunched over a grate against the cold. She put a twenty-dollar bill in her cup.
During the last two weeks of March, as Madaket’s strength returned, so did her impatience, and the day came when Joanna arrived at the hospital to find Madaket pacing the halls in her hospital gown and the new robe Joanna had bought her. Joanna had given much thought to the selection of this robe; wool would chafe Madaket’s skin, and Madaket would scorn anything satiny or sexy. Joanna had thought she’d found the perfect garment in the thick velvety terry cloth in a luscious shade of deep turquoise. But the robe’s simple span of unbroken color somehow counterpoised in unfortunate contrast Madaket’s ravaged hands and face. The burned area was at last entirely covered with new skin, and the doctors predicted that eventually that area would be paler than Madaket’s original skin, but now it was still a savage glare of crimson. There was no color on earth that could help that.
Partly to entertain Madaket and keep her thoughts off her raw and itching skin, but also with the hopes of encouraging the young woman to envision her future, Joanna attempted to interest Madaket in various projects. She spent hours at a travel agency, garnering sheaves of glossy travel brochures, which she took to the hospital and spread all over Madaket’s bed. “Let’s plan an itinerary, and when you get out of here, we’ll spend a few months roaming the world. Where would you like to go? Paris? London?”
“I don’t think I can face the thought of traveling anywhere yet, Joanna,” Madaket said somberly. “I’ll have to get used to people flinching from the sight of my face, or staring horrified at me, before I can travel.”
“Sounds like you need to develop thicker skin,” Joanna said. “Hey. That was a joke. Come on, smile.”
Madaket grinned and rolled her eyes.
Another day, Joanna said, “What would you think about starting college in the fall? I’ll pay your tuition. I’ll help you study for the high school equivalency exam.”
“I’ve never been interested in college.”
“All right, then, what about career-oriented courses? In the culinary arts? Or homeopathic medicine?”
“Joanna, to do any of those things, I’d have to live off island. And I don’t want to do that. I never wanted to do that. I just want to be on Nantucket. I just want to go home.”
One evening, when Madaket had complained about the hospital food, Joanna brought in tacos and burritos and tostados and tortillas and even, hidden in a Styrofoam coffee cup, a margarita for herself. By this time Madaket spent as little time in bed as necessary, and so they flattened the electric bed and lowered it to an appropriate table height and spread food out over the white cotton sheets.
“I’ve weaned Christopher,” she announced to Madaket, raising her cup in a toast. “He’s eating solid foods now. He’s wild about applesauce.”
“What a good boy.” Madaket had Christopher on her knees. He was the one person who could always get her to smile.
“Listen, Madaket, we’ve got to make some plans. You’ll be sprung from here soon. I’ve been talking to Justin from my fancy office over at room 1215 in the Holiday Inn. They’ve arranged an author tour for me in the last two weeks of June. When my question-and-answer book comes out. Seven cities. New York, of course, and Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Dallas, Kansas City, and Philadelphia. I think you should come with me. You could help with Christopher, but more than that, you could see the country. And honestly, Madaket, I’d love to have you along.”
“That’s nice of you, Joanna. And I don’t mean to be a drag. But I just want to go home. The idea of traveling anywhere is abhorrent to me right now.”
“I understand.” Joanna couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice. Now what, she wondered in a silent, private frenzy, was she going to do about a nanny to help with Christopher on the trip?
As if reading her mind, Madaket assured her, “I’ll stay on Nantucket and take care of Christopher for you. As you said, he’s weaned. And it would be difficult for you to travel with a baby, and frankly, Joanna, it wouldn’t be that great for Christopher to be dragged through all those airports and hotels. He doesn’t need so much exposure to germs. Not to mention a totally turbulent schedule.”
Joanna feigned intense interest in her taco. Madaket was speaking as if she had almost equal rights to Christopher, equal authority in how the baby was nurtured. Joanna was touched by this, and pleased, and amused, and also slightly affronted. Christopher was her child! But if she meant what she’d told Madaket, that Madaket was now part of her family, then Madaket had rights to Christopher, too. Had she really meant all this?
Yes, she thought, she did. It would take some time getting used to the thought of truly sharing her little boy, but it seemed a blessing that Christopher might have some other person on this earth to love him as her own.
At the end of March, six weeks after the fire, Joanna flew up to Boston, checked Madaket out of the Burn Center, and brought her back to the island in a humming, vibrating, eight-passenger plane. Madaket’s hair, grown back enough by now to look like merely a very bad punk cut, was covered by a floppy blue velvet hat. Joanna glared at the other passengers who blanched or gaped at Madaket’s scarred face, but Madaket didn’t seem aware of the other people. She pressed her eyes to the window, eagerly watching the island come into view. There it was, the jewel of the sea, green and golden land curving in blue water, the beaches and stretches and arms of sand, the lighthouses, the town with its steeples, the ribbons of roads winding through the moors, the green pine trees, the soaring gulls. As they landed, they saw a young deer grazing near the runway, and two large hawks lifted away from their perch on an evergreen to fly away from the airplane’s noise.
Madaket turned to Joanna. “Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” Her eyes were brilliant with tears.
It was a cool, windy day with the sun high in a yellow sky and a breeze buffeting them as they walked together across the airport parking lot to Joanna’s Jeep. Madaket’s clothes, an assortment of new garments donated by the community or bought with care by Joanna, fell in loose layers around her body exactly as her clothes had always done. The rest of her new wardrobe was waiting for her at the Latherns’ house, where they would live for a few weeks. Madaket tossed her overnight bag into the passenger side of the Jeep, then said, “Joanna, I’m going to walk.”
“Oh! Are you sure? Aren’t you tired?”
“Not at all. I’m so glad to be back. I just want to walk and look at everything.”
“Would you like me to pick you up somewhere?”
“No, thanks. I’ll just come to the Latherns’ when I’m ready. I probably won’t be back until after dark.”
“All right. Well, here—at least take some change, then I’ll know you can call me if you get tired. And remember, you very well might get tired after being inactive for so long.”
“I know. Thanks.” Madaket was chafing with impatience.
“Madaket. You know, the house was burned to the ground.
It still looks—wounded—out there.”
“Fine, I won’t go there. Anyway, I want to walk on the moors.”
“Good. We’ll go to my place, our place, tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay. Bye now.” Madaket shoved the coins in her coat pocket and almost sprinted away.
Joanna felt a surge of envy. How lucky Madaket was, to love this island so much, so that returning here immediately renewed her spirits. Joanna loved Christopher, and her spirits were lifted by his darling adoring face, and her work was both a solace and a pleasure, but she still felt oddly lethargic about much of the rest of life. She knew she should turn her thoughts to building a new house on her property, but she hadn’t yet been able to summon any enthusiasm for the project. Perhaps with Madaket home, she’d feel more excitement.
The next morning, after fortifying themselves with hearty breakfasts, the two women agreed to go together to look at Joanna’s property. Madaket slipped into the harness of a Snugli and adjusted it over her back, and Joanna maneuvered Christopher into it.
“Wow! He’s getting heavy,” she told Joanna.
“My big boy,” Joanna cooed, rubbing noses with Christopher.
They set off down the road. Madaket’s head was covered and shaded by her floppy hat, and even though the day was mild, she wore gloves and a scarf around her neck and the lower part of her face because the hospital had impressed upon her the necessity of keeping her skin protected from the sun at all times for at least a year.
As they turned down the white gravel drive, Joanna’s heart began to jolt with trepidation. This was never an easy moment for her, seeing the ruins of her house. She’d had the worst of the debris cleaned up; she’d hired a crew to bulldoze and shovel and haul off the rubble; she’d had them knock down the two remaining useless chimneys. The bricks that could be saved were stacked, waiting to be incorporated into a new house. Still, the property had a wounded look about it. Where once the house had stood was now an expanse of black and charred ground covered with the sand dug from the cellar where the Snow bodies had been found. Wolf and Bitch had also died in the fire, and Joanna worried that when Madaket was confronted with the actual remains of the fire she would break down in some way.
But Madaket only walked around the vast expanse of blackened earth, solemnly studying it before turning toward the front of the property and then running and kneeling on the ground. Feverishly she raked with her hands at the straw-colored mulch she’d spread over her garden. Joanna drew near.
“Look!” Madaket cried. She’d uncovered masses of tight swords of green just breaking through the hard ground. “The daffodils! The tulips! They’re up! They’ll be opening soon! And my little chives have peeked through! And my sweet marjoram!”
Joanna knelt next to her. Christopher was laughing and hopping against Madaket’s back, rocking the Snugli, excited about Madaket’s excitement.
“Look,” Madaket said, pointing. “Here. Touch.”
Until that moment, Joanna had considered selling her Squam property and buying a house in a completely different location—it would be easier and quicker than having something new built, and the difficult memories could be better forgotten. But when she saw Madaket kneeling in her garden, talking to her plants as if they were her relatives, she knew she had to stay here. And she found that obligation oddly comforting. It seemed a good thing to have any reason at all to remain anywhere on the earth.
They couldn’t stay forever in the Latherns’ house. It was essential to have some kind of orderly home base before she left on her author’s tour in June, and accordingly Joanna and Christopher and Madaket went looking at rental houses with Bob.
Finding a suitable temporary home turned out to be more difficult than Joanna had realized. Many of the older, larger houses were Greek Revivals, with architectural details and spaces that reminded her of her home, and walking through them felt at once familiar and odd. They made her sad; sometimes they made her shiver. They were also just more house, more space and impedimenta, than she wanted to deal with right now. Of the newer houses, some were designed for summer living but would be hard to keep warm in the winter, and others were too expensively furnished or inconveniently arranged for family life.
One day Bob showed Joanna and Madaket a rustic two-bedroom cottage at Quidnet. Joanna saw the light in Madaket’s eyes and rented it. Madaket loved it because of the location: the house looked right out at Sesachacha Pond, and its one picture window was always full of water and sky. Also, the homely little cottage was close to Joanna’s property and Madaket’s garden. Joanna considered the furniture and equipment functional, comfortable, and clean, and easily replaceable if something should get broken. The walls of the cramped bedroom she shared with Christopher were covered with a wallpaper bizarrely printed to look like pine logs, complete with knotholes. The floors throughout were carpeted in a tough loopy shag of an ambiguous green-brown color; Joanna had it cleaned, then shrugged her shoulders: it would be perfect for Christopher as he crawled and dropped his graham crackers and knocked over his bowl of stewed peas.
So they moved into the cottage, which they not wholly in jest referred to as “the shack,” until a new house could be built in Squam. They studied blueprints and books on architectural styles. They toured various model houses. But nothing sparked their desire. Early every morning, and late at night, and every spare moment she had, Madaket spent at Joanna’s property, working on her garden.
Joanna worked as efficiently as she could in the cramped, makeshift office she set up at one end of her ugly rented bedroom. While Madaket played with Christopher, she continued the groundwork for the sixth new season of Fabulous Homes, talked to her secretary at the network, held telephone and fax conferences with Justin. She’d scheduled the taping of the first two FH shows during the last two weeks of May. Two more would be shot in June; she’d return briefly to Nantucket, then go off on her author’s tour. Then more FH shoots. The calendar hanging from a nail above her desk was slashed and scribbled with colored inks demarcating different shoots; this was as gorgeous to her as any Renoir.
A few days later the phone rang. It was a terrible early May day, cold and windy and rainy and gray, the kind that made people curse Nantucket. Christopher was sniffling and fussing, his tiny nose was chafed, and his bottom, too. Madaket had taken the Jeep into town for groceries and liquid baby aspirin. Lackadaisically playing with Christopher, Joanna lounged across her bed, still wearing the sweat suit which she remained in so often it was beginning to feel like her second skin. She hadn’t yet gone shopping for clothes to replace all she’d lost in the fire.
She answered the phone. Jake’s voice boomed over the line. “Look, Joanna, I’ve got a proposition to make. I want to fly out to Nantucket and have a good long talk with you about an idea I have. Friday night okay?”
Joanna smiled at his familiar voice. “Friday night’s fine.”
“Great. Let me take you out to dinner.”
“I’d love that.”
“Can you make a reservation for us? Someplace nice.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll rent a car and be at your place around six. Okay?”
“Jake, I can’t wait.”
After they’d said their goodbyes, Joanna called a restaurant, then, cheered by the pleasure of Jake’s voice, called Robert Miller’s and made an appointment to have her hair done—everything, color, conditioning, a trim and style—perhaps she’d have it cut into one of those short, sleek, chic styles so popular lately. Then it occurred to her that she had nothing to wear out on Friday night. She dressed and when Madaket returned from shopping, left Christopher with her and drove into town.
The sky still hung low and gray, but Main Street was a cheerful sight; all up and down in the shop window boxes, daffodils and hyacinths bobbed, drinking in the rain. She parked and walked up Main Street. The stores and boutiques were opening for spring and summer and full of the newest styles. Her pulse quickened. She hadn’t indulged in a good fit of clothes shopp
ing for a long time; she was more than overdue. All afternoon she tried on silk dresses and challis skirts and white shirts and long loose cashmere sweaters and shoes and hose and hats. She bought everything, including lots of clothes and a wonderful wide-brimmed spring hat for Madaket.
Friday evening Jake and Joanna sat at a corner table in the Boarding House. Joanna sipped a strawberry daiquiri the color and texture of her new creamy silk evening suit. Jake had his usual Scotch. The wind and rain had disappeared, leaving the island cleansed. The air was sweet and mild, the trees flowering, the air fragrant. It was almost warm enough to eat outside, but Jake had preferred the privacy of an inside table.
“You look wonderful,” he told Joanna.
“You look pretty good yourself,” she replied. And he did. He looked somehow younger.
“You can thank my daughter-in-law for that,” Jake said. “She made me a grandfather a few weeks ago—a little girl. Named her Emily, after my wife, and it’s the strangest thing, Joanna, but this baby looks so much like Emily it’s amazing.” He cleared his throat. “I think I’ve finally been able to cope with Emily’s death, now that I see some of her is carried on. The baby has a way of smiling—” He shook his head, unable to continue.
Joanna put her hand on Jake’s arm, touched by his confidence. “That’s lovely, Jake.”
“How’s Christopher?” Jake asked. “And Madaket?”
“Christopher is pure sunshine,” Joanna told him. “That’s one of the lovely things about having a baby around, I guess. No matter what’s going on in the rest of the world, just seeing the people he loves—and being fed—keep him happy.”
“Not a bad philosophy for any of us,” Jake said thoughtfully.
“Madaket’s doing surprisingly well, too. She’s so glad to be home, and so glad to see her garden … She’s amazingly resilient.”
“Madaket isn’t as greedy as the rest of us,” Jake surmised. “Like Christopher, she’s grounded in a few basics.”
